Indian History Mixed Quiz: Set 56

The correct answer is C, Vijayalaya. Vijayalaya, about the middle of the ninth century, took Thanjavur from the Muttaraiyar chiefs who held the Kaveri delta as subordinates of the Pallavas, and from that base the imperial Chola line grew. Thanjavur remained the Chola capital until Rajendra I built Gangaikonda Cholapuram. Option A is wrong because Karikala belonged to the early Cholas of the Sangam age, who ruled from Uraiyur centuries earlier and are credited with the Kallanai on the Kaveri. Option B is wrong because Aditya I was Vijayalaya's son, who extended the kingdom by defeating the Pallava ruler Aparajita. Option D is wrong because Parantaka I came later and was checked at the battle of Takkolam by the Rashtrakuta king Krishna III, in which the Chola prince Rajaditya was killed.

The correct answer is B, Indian Opinion. Gandhi started Indian Opinion at Durban in 1903 to put the case of Indians settled in South Africa before the public.

The weekly was printed at the Phoenix Settlement near Durban and came out in English and Gujarati, with Tamil and Hindi sections in its early years. Gandhi later wrote that a struggle such as satyagraha could not be carried on without a journal of its own, and the paper carried his writings on the campaign against the Asiatic Registration Act.

Option A, Young India, was an English weekly Gandhi edited in India from 1919. Option C, Swaraj Hind, is not a paper associated with him. Option D, Navajivan, was his Gujarati weekly, also taken up in India in 1919.

Exam tip: Indian Opinion, 1903, South Africa; Young India and Navajivan, 1919, India.

The correct answer is A, personal pay and rank, and the number of horsemen to be maintained. The zat number fixed the salary of the holder and his place in the order of precedence at court, while the sawar number fixed the contingent of cavalry he had to keep ready for the emperor. If the sawar rank equalled the zat the holder was of the first class, if it was half or more of the zat he was of the second, and below that of the third. B describes the jagir records kept by the revenue department, not the mansab. C invents a measure that never existed in the system. D confuses the mansab with the revenue schedule of the dahsala settlement. The mansab was also neither hereditary nor permanent, and it lapsed to the state on the death of the holder.

The correct answer is D, He was the first recipient of the Padma Shree Award. C. Rajagopalachari was one of the first three recipients of the Bharat Ratna in 1954, along with C. V. Raman and S. Radhakrishnan, not of the Padma Shri, so this statement is not true. Known as Rajaji, he took charge in 1948 as the last Governor General of India and the only Indian to hold that post, after Lord Mountbatten left. He had earlier been Premier of the Madras Presidency, Governor of West Bengal, Union Home Minister and Chief Minister of Madras State. A is true, since no other Indian held the office. B is true, because he founded the Swatantra Party in 1959 to oppose Nehru's policy of state control and land ceilings. C is true, as he was a close associate of Gandhi and a senior Congress leader. Exam tip: the first Bharat Ratna went to Rajaji, Raman and Radhakrishnan in 1954.

The correct answer is B, Rajendra I. Rajendra I, who ruled from 1014 to 1044, sent a fleet across the Bay of Bengal against the Sailendra kingdom of Srivijaya, in the Malay peninsula and Sumatra, and defeated its ruler Sangrama Vijayottunga Varman. The campaign was fought to keep the sea route to China open for Tamil merchants, and from the conquest of Kadaram the king is remembered as Kadaram Kondan. Option A is wrong because Rajaraja I campaigned overseas against Sri Lanka and the Maldives, not Srivijaya. Option C is wrong because Vijayalaya ruled only a small kingdom around Thanjavur and had no navy of this reach. Option D is wrong because Rajendra III was the last Chola, under whom the empire shrank before the Pandyas; the age of overseas expeditions was long over by then.

The correct answer is A, Badruddin Tyabji. The Bombay Presidency Association was founded in 1885 by Badruddin Tyabji, Pherozeshah Mehta and Kashinath Trimbak Telang, three lawyers of Bombay who are often called the city's triumvirate.

The body was formed to press Indian political demands before the British Parliament, especially after the anger caused by the Ilbert Bill, and it came up in the very year the Indian National Congress was founded. Badruddin Tyabji later became the third president of the Congress at its Madras session in 1887, the first Muslim to hold that office.

Option B, Behramji M Malabari, was a social reformer and journalist who campaigned against child marriage. Option C, AK Fazlul Haq, was a Bengal leader who moved the Lahore Resolution in 1940. Option D, Zakir Husain, was the third President of India.

Exam tip: Bombay triumvirate — Tyabji, Mehta and Telang; Bombay Presidency Association 1885.

The correct answer is A, Raja Todar Mal, who had learnt revenue work under Sher Shah and rose to be the revenue minister of Akbar. Under his settlement the average produce and the average price of the previous ten years were calculated for every crop in every locality, the demand was fixed at about one-third of that average produce and stated in cash per bigha, and land was measured with the bamboo jarib and the ilahi gaz. B was a leading Rajput noble and commander of Akbar, not a revenue officer. C wrote the Ain-i-Akbari in which the settlement is described, which makes him a plausible but wrong choice. D was an earlier finance officer of the reign who held office before the dahsala was framed.

The correct answer is A, Nizam Shahis : Bijapur, which is the mismatched pair. The Nizam Shahis ruled from Ahmadnagar, founded by Malik Ahmad in 1490, while Bijapur belonged to the Adil Shahis of Yusuf Adil Shah. All five Deccan Sultanates grew out of the break-up of the Bahmani kingdom between about 1490 and 1518, and four of them joined hands to crush Vijayanagara at the battle of Talikota in 1565. Bijapur is remembered for the Gol Gumbaz, Golconda for its fort and diamonds, and Ahmadnagar for Chand Bibi’s defence against the Mughals. Option B is a correct pair, because the Barid Shahis held Bidar, the last Bahmani capital. Option C is a correct pair, because the Qutb Shahis of Quli Qutb Shah ruled Golconda and later founded Hyderabad. Option D is a correct pair, because the Imad Shahis held Berar, the first province to break away and the first to be annexed by Ahmadnagar. Exam tip: Ahmadnagar Nizam Shahi, Bijapur Adil Shahi, Golconda Qutb Shahi, Bidar Barid Shahi, Berar Imad Shahi.

The correct answer is B, Chola. The inscriptions on the temple walls at Uttaramerur in Tamil Nadu, of the tenth century, set out in detail how the sabha of that brahmadeya village chose the members of its committees: who was qualified by landholding, house, learning and age, who was disqualified, and how name-tickets were drawn from a pot by a boy, the kudavolai system. They are the standard evidence cited for local self-government under the Cholas. Option A is wrong because the Pallavas, though they ruled the same region earlier and left inscriptions at Mahabalipuram and Kanchipuram, are not associated with these records. Option C is wrong because the Rashtrakutas ruled the Deccan from Manyakheta. Option D is wrong because the Chalukyas of Badami and Kalyani ruled further north-west, in Karnataka.

The correct answer is C, Bronze/Copper. Muhammad bin Tughlaq issued token coins of bronze and copper in 1329-30 that were to pass at the value of the silver tanka. The idea itself was sound and had worked in China and Persia, but the sultan did not keep the minting of these coins in state hands. Goldsmiths across the empire forged them in their homes, the treasury was flooded with fake coins, and traders refused to accept them. The sultan had to withdraw the issue and exchange the token coins for silver, which drained the treasury. A is wrong because Rupak was a coin name of the ancient period, not of this experiment. B is wrong because the rupee was introduced much later by Sher Shah Suri as a silver coin. D is wrong because the tanka was the standard silver coin whose value the token coins were meant to carry. Exam tip: link the pair - Muhammad bin Tughlaq and the failed bronze token currency of 1329.

The correct answer is B, the branding of horses and the descriptive roll of soldiers. Mansabdars were paid for the troopers they maintained, and the standing temptation was to hire horses and men for the day of inspection and send them away afterwards. Akbar therefore ordered that every horse accepted at muster be branded with the imperial mark, the dagh, and that a written description of each soldier, the chehra, be kept in the office of the Mir Bakhshi, so that the same animals and men could not be shown twice. A is wrong because jagirs were tankha, mashrut, in-am and watan. C and D name no such terms in the records of the period. The two measures together made the Mughal muster the most closely checked military roll of its age in India.

The correct answer is B, Arikamedu. Arikamedu, on the Ariyankuppam river near Puducherry on the Coromandel coast, began as a small fishing settlement and grew into a busy port that traded with the Romans and the Greco Roman world in the first centuries of the common era. Excavations there have brought out Roman amphorae that carried wine and olive oil, red glazed Arretine ware, glass and stone beads, lamps and Roman coins, along with the local rouletted pottery, which is why the site is identified with the Poduke named in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. A is wrong because Badami in Karnataka was the inland capital of the Chalukyas, known for its rock cut cave temples. C is wrong because Lothal in Gujarat is a Harappan site with a dockyard, far older and on the western coast. D is wrong because tulapurushadana was a ritual of weighing oneself against gold and giving it away, not a place at all. Exam tip: Arikamedu near Puducherry is the Poduke of Roman trade; Lothal is the Harappan dock in Gujarat.

The correct answer is C, mandalam. The Chola empire was divided into mandalams, the largest provinces, which were frequently placed under royal princes or senior officers. A mandalam was divided into valanadus, a valanadu into nadus, and a nadu was a group of villages whose landholders met as the nattar. Option A is wrong because a nadu is a cluster of villages, several steps below a mandalam. Option B is wrong because a valanadu is a division within a mandalam, so it cannot be the largest. Option D is wrong because kurram, like nadu, is a term for a small group of villages. Candidates should remember the descending order mandalam, valanadu, nadu and village, because questions are set on both the largest and the smallest unit.

The correct answer is A, Chalukya. Vikramaditya VI ruled the Western Chalukya kingdom of Kalyani, and his court poet Bilhana wrote the Vikramankadevacharita on his life. Vikramaditya VI reigned from about 1076 to 1126 CE from Kalyani in present-day Karnataka, and he started the Chalukya-Vikrama era, a new reckoning counted from his accession, which very few Indian rulers ever did. Another scholar of his court was Vijnaneshwara, who wrote the Mitakshara, the best known commentary on the Yajnavalkya Smriti and a key text of Hindu law. B is wrong because the Pallavas ruled from Kanchi and had faded away by the tenth century. C is wrong because the Rashtrakutas of Manyakheta were displaced by these very Chalukyas in 973 CE. D is wrong because the Western Gangas ruled Talakad in southern Karnataka and are remembered for Shravanabelagola, not for Bilhana. Exam tip: Bilhana wrote Vikramankadevacharita for Vikramaditya VI, and Vijnaneshwara wrote the Mitakshara at the same court.

The correct answer is B, Jahangir. Raising the sawar rank of a favoured noble meant raising his zat as well, which disturbed the order of precedence and cost the treasury more in personal pay. Jahangir therefore allowed a noble to be asked to maintain double or triple the troopers of his sawar rank, paid for the additional men but left at the same zat, and the arrangement was called du-aspa sih-aspa, meaning of two horses and three horses. A created the mansab system itself with its zat and sawar ranks. C is remembered in this chapter for the month ratio by which the pay of a mansabdar was scaled down. D expanded the empire into the Deccan and faced the resulting shortage of land for assignment.

The correct answer is B, Belgrade. The first summit of the Non-Aligned Movement met at Belgrade, then the capital of Yugoslavia, in September 1961, and twenty-five countries took part. The movement grew out of the wish of newly free nations to stay out of the two Cold War blocs, and its founders were Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Sukarno of Indonesia and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. Its guiding ideas were peaceful coexistence, an end to colonialism and disarmament. A is wrong because Bandung in Indonesia hosted the Afro-Asian Conference of 1955, which prepared the ground but was not a NAM summit. C is wrong because Cairo hosted the second summit in 1964. D is wrong because Jakarta hosted the tenth summit, in 1992. Exam tip: remember the order, Bandung 1955 then the first NAM summit at Belgrade in 1961.

The correct answer is A, the lost-wax process. In this method, called cire perdue, the image is first modelled in wax, then covered with clay to form a mould; the wax is melted and drained out, molten metal is poured into the hollow, and the clay is broken away to reveal a single solid image that cannot be reproduced from the same mould. Chola bronzes of Nataraja, Somaskanda and the Shaiva saints were cast this way for use in temple processions. Option B is wrong because sand casting is a modern industrial method unsuited to such detail. Option C is wrong because repousse is the hammering of sheet metal from the reverse side, used in ornaments and masks, not in solid images. Option D is wrong because granulation is a goldsmith's technique of fusing tiny beads of metal onto a surface.

The correct answer is A, polaj, the best land, under the plough every season and assessed at the full rate of about one-third of the average produce. B, parauti, was land left fallow for a season or two to recover its strength, and it paid the full rate once it was cultivated again. C, chachar, had lain fallow for three or four years, and D, banjar, for five years or more, and both were assessed at concessional and rising rates over a few years so that a cultivator had a reason to break them up again. Learning the four in order, polaj, parauti, chachar and banjar, from the most to the least cultivated, answers every form of this question. The classification is described in the Ain-i-Akbari, which also gives the rates charged on each class of land.

The correct answer is B, Parantaka I. Parantaka I had extended Chola power over the Pandya country and taken the title Maduraikonda, but his advance was stopped at Takkolam, in present-day Tamil Nadu, where the Rashtrakuta king Krishna III defeated the Chola army and the crown prince Rajaditya was killed in the fighting. The defeat cost the Cholas their northern districts for a generation. Option A is wrong because Aditya I, the son of Vijayalaya, is remembered for ending Pallava power by defeating Aparajita. Option C is wrong because Rajaraja I came after this setback and restored Chola supremacy, conquering northern Sri Lanka. Option D is wrong because Kulottunga I ruled much later and is associated with the Kalinga war described in the Kalingattuparani. The battle of Takkolam is dated to about 949 and is the standard example of the Rashtrakuta check on Chola expansion in the tenth century, so the pairing of Takkolam with Krishna III and Parantaka I should be memorised together.

The correct answer is B, suba, sarkar, pargana, mauza. The suba was the province, headed by a subedar with his own diwan, bakhshi, sadr and qazi; the sarkar was the district, where the faujdar held charge of law and order and the amalguzar of revenue; the pargana was a group of villages with its shiqdar, amil and qanungo; and the mauza was the village itself, with the muqaddam as headman and the patwari keeping the accounts. Akbar fixed twelve subas in 1580, and they rose to fifteen by the end of his reign. A, C and D disturb that order, and such sequence questions are set precisely because the middle two units are easily interchanged. Remember that the faujdar and the amalguzar both worked at the level of the sarkar, one with troops and one with the revenue papers.